Simple Shop Documentation

simpleshop The Simple Shop Joomla template was released in April 2008.

The following steps will help you to work better with the Simple Shop template. Please follow the instructions and use this item as a guide for setting up your site and configuring the various options found in the template as well as the extensions and scripts that are showcased on the Simple Shop demo site.

preview

feature Overview

download

Getting Started

Choosing between the template or the quickstart.

Installing the template.

Choose this option if you already have your site created or have at least made changes to the default Joomla installation and want to overlay this theme onto your site. For a complete installation of the demo site on your server please refer to installing the quickstart package.

Installing the template is achieved using the same method as installing any other template or extension.

Navigate to your Joomla admin area at yoursite.com/administrator

Navigate to Extensions > Install/uninstall

Click browse and locate the template zip on your harddrive.

Click upload and install.

After you receive the success message, navigate to Extensions > Template Manager

Select the radio checkbox next to the Canvas template and then click on the button at the top right of the screen that says default.

Now if you navigate to the front page of your site and you should see the Canvas template installed into your Joomla site.

Installing the quickstart.

The Joomlabamboo quickstart packages are complete replicas of the particular template's demo site. They are basically the same as the Joomla installation zip except they come with the template, watermarked images and extensions you see on the demo site. They are a quick and easy way to have your site setup and ready to edit.

You can read the tutorial on installing the quickstart packages here.

An extra step when configuring Virtuemart Quickstart packages

When installing the quickstart package with Virtuemart there is one extra step in the process that needs to occur before your Joomla?Virtuemart simple shop is ready to be populated. Virtuemart stores the site url in a file called virtuemart.cfg.php - this site url does not update in some cases and so the VM config file needs to be edited. You can find this file in the administrator/component/com_virtuemart folder for your joomla installation.

1. Open the file and scroll down to lines 35 and 36. Where you may see a reference to the localhost. Replace this text with the url of your site.
eg: http://192.168.1.5:8888/joomla/quickstart/J158_simpleshop/ should become http://www.yoursite.com/

Once this occurs and the setting takes hold the images for the quickstart will appear and you will be able to successfully navigate through the Joomla installation.

Extensions used on the demo site

Extensions used on the demo site include:

JB Login
Extended menu - Suckerfish

Installing the extensions

Installing the modules.

Navigate to your Joomla admin area at yoursite.com/administrator

Navigate to Extensions > Install/uninstall

Click browse and locate the extension zip on your hard drive. If the zip is named unzipfirst then you must unzip the files.

Click upload and install.

After you receive the success message, navigate to Extensions > Module Manager

Select the radio checkbox next to the module you just installed and begin to configure the options.

Ensure that the module is published, is assigned to a menu item on the bottom left and all of the necessary parameters are configured.

Apply or save the changes you have made.

Configuring the Template

You can set the width of the template in the Template Manager.

simpleshopWidth

Layout and module positions

Here is an overview of the module positions available in this template. In most cases the styles are preset and there is no need to use a module class suffix to activate the design as seen in the demo. Simple Shop Version 2.0 includes the addition of two module positions to push the number available to 10 coded modules. The number of potential modules available in the template is actually 17 - given that you can have multiple modules in modt of the positions available in the template.

The thin shopping cart and login module are extra hacks and modules that are included in the template zip however and will need to be installed in order to re-create the login and cart modules.

There are a total of 9 module positions in this template.

The Demo is setup as follows:

JB Login is published at User1.
The Thin Virtumeart Cart is published to top.
An Extended Menu module is published to the left position using the flat list setting.
Advert1 and advert2 sit above and below the main content area. It is possible to publish upto three modules in each module position and have them space evenly across the page.
A menu module with the flat list selected is published to the bottom left menu area.
The bottom position is published to the lower right area.